Happy 2010!!!

From our 2009 'New Year's' letter:

Greetings one and all! I can hardly believe another year has come and gone! This year we have been mightily blessed and pray you have seen many good times and share in many more to come.


Our biggest "little" news is our newest addition to the Valiant family: Griffin Isaiah Valiant. He was born on April 24th and weighed in at 6 pounds 12 ounces. He was just 3 weeks early and after a short stay in the NICU was released to home with his momma. He turned 8 months old on Christmas Eve and surprised us all on Christmas Day by uttering his first words..."Da-Da". It was a delightful present! It has been a wonderful eight months with this AMAZINGLY good baby! He has advanced out of most of the newer baby type milestones and is already sitting up, eating solid foods, rolling around, and more! He's about 15 pounds or so and is perfectly healthy. He doesn’t have any teeth yet, but boy is he a drooler! He likes to smile and play peek-a-boo and his big brother Jake loves to make this ticklish baby boy laugh . I really can't say enough about our newest son-Griffin is so very good!


On to our spunky little Owen: Owen turned 3 years old on November 3rd. He is such a "big" boy now-well, mostly. He adores his 3 brothers and calls "Diffin" his little "tup-take" and "butter-tup". He's a "hefty" 24 pounds these days and had a busy year with a few surgeries, including a tonsil and adenoidectomy in which he recovered with NO pain medication-not even tylenol. He's amazing. For being a little guy, I bet you'd say he has one of the biggest personalities you ever saw if you could spend an afternoon with him. He sings and dances like you wouldn't believe. He loves music and just recently has started quoting movies like 'The Santa Clause'. He isn't potty trained yet and he has NO desire to be, but I have a plan and am praying he is potty trained soon.

Jake turned 6 in September and began kindergarten this year. He loves his half day kindergarten class and his sweet teacher. He's a healthy, hard headed but sweet boy who loves to tell us what he is learning like his Bible Verses and his sight words. He loves his DS and the Wii and he loves to play with his neighborhood friends. He also loves to quote movies and joined the Kids of faith Choir (from our church). He enjoyed another season of t-ball this past summer and even more so loved playing his first season of soccer. He is now involved with basketball and isn't so sure yet if basketball is his thing. Jake is probably our most passionate child. Whatever he does (good or bad), he does 100%. He's quite the problem solver too.


TJ is now TEN years old!!! He is a 4th grader at Faith Christian School, which he is finding much harder than previous grades. He has finally started losing teeth and is up to 6 teeth lost now and we see braces in his future . He enjoyed soccer this fall more than he thought he would (he hadn’t played in years!). He was quite good at it. He is now enjoying basketball this winter season. He loves playing his DS and fishing is his newfound LOVE. He even got to go ice fishing over this Christmas break with his Uncle Andrew (my brother who got married on the 4th of December by the way!). TJ still loves to read (especially science and information type books) and he is a really good big brother and is really "growing up" both physically and socially. He's nearly as tall as me now.

Tim is enjoying working at the Creasy Lane Walgreens. He is in his 12th year with Walgreens. Tim is as busy as can be with work and being a great daddy to our four boys (and of course a GREAT husband to me). He volunteers in the community with Habitat for Humanity as a mentor/financial counselor and he serves at our church in the college ministry aiding students with their finances and budgets. He even still reads a bit in his ‘spare time’, and continues to grow his massive book collection. He also serves on the school's special events committee which plans events to raise funds like the popular Eagle Auction and Eagle Fair coming up in the spring.

I am *loving* being a stay at home mom more than ever. Owen is giving me a run for my money, but Griffin being such a good baby makes up for it –most of the time. I love being able to go to all the boys practices, games and programs. I now have a new "hobby" that has blessed our family this year. I have begun couponing and we are enjoying (as a family) finding great deals and donating lots of freebies along the way. I even took some of my newfound skills and taught a small group of women how to use couponing to be better stewards of what the Lord has blessed them with. Being that our annual Christmas letter has become a New Year's letter, it's obvious that I'm quite the busy wife and momma and at times my days are so full, I simply don't get everything done. But, our boys are loved and well-cared for and that's what really matters. It's nice to be able to look towards 2010 this year and make goals for myself and our family and not worry about an outside work schedule and what-not.

We pray that you also look to 2010 with much anticipation of all that you can achieve. Hopefully, next year we'll be back to the annual Christmas letter, but who knows? It could be an 2011 Easter letter at this pace...4 kids (boys)=busy, busy, busy, BUSY!

Much love and blessings to you in 2010!

~ The Valiant’s

Tim, Renay, TJ, Jake, Owen, & Griffin

PS Find us on the web at our rarely updated family blog www.valiantupdates.blogspot.com and more frequently at Facebook. Our badges to add us as friends are on our blog site.